


ayotochtli

by moonrocks



Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: Animals, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23379889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonrocks/pseuds/moonrocks
Summary: An encounter with a rival drug gang takes a turn for the worse.Nacho makes a choice. Lalo repays a debt.
Relationships: Eduardo "Lalo" Salamanca/Ignacio "Nacho" Varga
Comments: 22
Kudos: 61





	ayotochtli

**Author's Note:**

> I use variations of the word blood in this about 25 times. So, like, the warning is there for a reason.

In the middle of the New Mexico badlands, Lalo makes Nacho brake for a nine-banded armadillo. 

As the car comes to a slow halt, Lalo chuckles, peering over the dashboard to get a better look at it. It scuttles across the desert dusted road, its bony scutes standing out against the heat warped asphalt. Nacho has never seen an armadillo so close to Albuquerque; they tend not to migrate this far southeast, but this one has set out on its own to change that. 

Lalo smiles a grin that cuts his face between his ears, the lines around his eyes crinkling. “You know, these bastards can jump,” he says. “One time my cousin ran over this big ugly fucker and it ripped out his bumper, wrecked the condenser core. I had to fix it up for him.” 

Nacho tenses his grip around the steering wheel, still watching the armadillo as its snout twitches, claws digging uselessly into the dirt. Lalo pops open the passenger side door and walks out into the carless road. He beckons Nacho to follow him, his laid-back posture framed by the gnat speckled windshield. 

“Hey, come on, take a look.” 

Nacho glances at his watch and reluctantly gets out of the car. Out of habit, he surveys the area. There’s nothing to see for miles in every direction, just hills and six o’clock sky and the vague shape of mountains in the distance. The vegetation is dense, dry bushes and trees that only reach about three feet off the ground, a smattering of yellow desert flowers to the left of where his 1971 AMC Javelin is parked in the middle of the road. 

Lalo stoops down, peering at the armadillo, head tilted. “Hey, it kinda looks like you,” Lalo says, glancing back at Nacho and laughing. “Don’t you think?”

Nacho suppresses the urge to roll his eyes. He checks his watch again. “The Najarro gang will be waiting.”

Lalo shrugs. “Let them wait then.” He stands up and taps the armadillo with the toe of his bright turquoise loafer. “Eh, _vamonos, mi pequeño amigo._ We got shit to do.”

Startled, the armadillo tucks its head underneath itself. Lalo giggles like an immature schoolboy crushing ants beneath his sneakers. Because of the rigidness of its armoured back, the armadillo is unable to curl up like the ones Nacho used to see at the zoo when he was a kid, five or six years old, before his father decided to uproot their life and move to New Mexico. 

Lalo nudges at the armadillo again. Finally, it moves, leaping forward two, three feet before disappearing into the roadside brush. Lalo swipes sand off the toe of his loafer, then brushes his hands off on his slacks. “You know what the Aztecs used to call those things?”

Nacho is uninterested, but he plays along. He always has to play along. “No, what did they call them?” 

“ _Ayotochtli_ ,” Lalo says, every syllable over-enunciated for full effect. “It means turtle rabbit.” He chuckles to himself. “Guess it was too fucking strange to be called a name of its own, they had to make it up from two of something.”

Nacho stares into the thick brush where the armadillo disappeared. Lalo heads back towards the car. The passenger door opens and closes and the radio starts blaring again, a reggaeton beat. 

“Ay, Nachito, _vamonos_ ,” Lalo calls, peeking his head out of the rolled-down window. “We don’t have all day.”

Nacho returns to the car, but he can still hear the animal scuttling, digging a hole in the back of his head. Its armour is fixed and irremovable: an acceptance that, no matter when or where, it’s always among enemies.

Maybe Nacho should take it as a sign. But he ignores it, gets into the car, and drives off, Lalo singing to himself in the passenger seat.

*

The Najarro gang had been known shit disturbers ever since Nacho was just starting out as a mid-level dealer, on his way to becoming a Salamanca right hand. They were a nonentity compared to the Juarez Cartel, a band of glorified highwaymen who hid out in the boonies and occasionally disrupted distribution lines or trespassed on rival turf. They had mingled with the California biker gangs who were trying to get a piece of the New Mexico business in the mid-nineties, but their alignments were really with low-tier gangs like the Espinosas. 

At least until a question of territory got between them.

Nacho keeps this in mind as he parks his Javelin in a rare patch of desert not littered with prickly shrubs. He cuts the ignition and the radio shuts off. Lalo continues humming, tapping a rhythm against the door before he steps out of the car. 

With Nacho following close behind, Lalo meets the men gathered in a sloppy semicircle around their parked vehicles: a van with tinted windows, a truck, two muscle cars that are more than conspicuous against the wasteland backdrop of the Albuquerque outskirts.

There are five of them. Nacho counts and recounts the men, memorizing their faces, looking them up and down, searching for a swell in their back pocket where a gun could be kept, the vague outline of a bulletproof vest. Nacho is wearing one of his own: a thin kevlar vest underneath his maroon button-up, just as a precaution. Before they left, Lalo had teased him for being paranoid, but after he was shot not once but twice under orders from Fring, he swore he never wanted to feel a pain like that again.

One of the men steps forward, revealing himself as the member with the most seniority. Nacho recognizes him as Chava Alvizo, the street gang leader, the man Lalo has been negotiating with through a third-party the past few days. He is much younger than Nacho expected, maybe late twenties, early thirties. His cheeks are pocketed and scarred, and Nacho can see a faded prison tattoo peeking above the collar of his shirt.

As Lalo approaches, the lieutenants behind Chava stiffen, hands at their sides. Nacho keeps his eyes on them, shadowing Lalo, stopping when he stops, moving when he moves. 

“Salamanca, _qué bien que se una a nosotros_ ,” Chava says. His voice is low but oddly soft-spoken. “You are late.”

“Hey, _perdón por llegar tarde_. We had road trouble,” Lalo replies with a good-natured laugh. “You must be the man I’ve heard so much about.”

Nacho had given Lalo the rundown on the Najarros as soon as they came out of the woodwork, offering the Salamancas a more efficient supply link, one that would cut their distribution time in half. Despite the goodwill that had formed between them and the cartel after the Cousins took out the Espinosas, Nacho had thought their rough and tumble operation would be of little use to the Salamancas. He had told Lalo as much, advised him that the deal would be a bust, but Lalo wanted to check it out anyway.

If Nacho has learned anything about Lalo since he came up from Mexico to run things, it’s that he likes a good deal. And if there is no deal, he likes to keep the competition close anyhow.

They go over the details, the money, the footwork that would be required. Nacho listens, but he pays more attention to the movements of the lieutenants, especially the stocky, poorly dressed man furthest to the right. 

Nacho knows a tweaker when he sees one. The tense shoulders, the tick-like sniffing, the bared gums, it all reminds him of how Tuco would get right before he flew off the handle, dig his fist into the face of some low-level street lackey until he saw red and bone. 

Nacho flexes his right hand. His fingers itch to touch the gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans. The lieutenant shifts from foot to foot, his steel-toed cowboy boots sifting through the sand. Meanwhile, Lalo is speaking. Lalo is laughing. Lalo is negotiating, assessing, charming his way through.

If Nacho were more naive, he would assume this was all just a formality, as inconsequential as a drug drop or a lunch counter business meeting. Lalo looks at ease when he should be anything but, but that is what Nacho is here for. He is the tense and cautionary presence behind him, a silent warning.

But then something shifts. 

Nacho has his gun out before he hears the initial shot, before he sees the bullet ricochet off the ground, sending sand and camel-coloured dust into the air after it.

Nacho thinks he hears Lalo laugh. 

The laugh lingers in his ears until the second shot fractures it in two. Nacho ducks behind his car before he can figure out where the shot is coming from, his skull slamming against the door. Pain splits over the crown of his head, tensing the muscles in his neck, and his finger hovers over the trigger of his gun. His hands are sweaty and he can feel his heartbeat in his temples, his adrenaline swelling, his breathing erratic.

From where he is, he can no longer see Lalo, his figure disappearing beyond the hotrod red body of the Javelin. Nacho nearly cries out when he hears another shot, then another, and another, and another. His ears ring with each pop. He props himself up against the door and desperately peers through the passenger window, fearing another barrage of fire. 

What he sees is Lalo, somehow still standing, unloading bullet after bullet from his semi-automatic. He is bleeding from his head, a shallow graze that would have killed him if it had been a hair closer to his skull. His ear is wet with blood. It clots in his sideburns, seeping down his face, but he is very much alive.

The same cannot be said of the two bodies sprawled out in front of him: Chava and one of his men. The wounds from their heads are leaking out into the dirt, bits of brain and tissue scattered above them like grotesque halos. The air smells metallic, thick with gunsmoke.

The remaining Najarros have taken cover behind their own vehicles. Nacho can barely see them from his vantage point. He stands, rising above the hood of his car, and pulls the trigger of his gun twice. The bullets ricochet uselessly against the body of the van, metal clanking, sparks erupting. He turns to Lalo, ready to urge him to take cover, when the tweaked-out lieutenant dives out from behind one of the muscle cars and rushes forward, his arm extended.

“ _Esto es para Los Espinosas!_ ” he yells. 

_This is for the Espinosas._

He turns to Nacho and fires. 

Nacho hears Lalo yell before he feels the searing pain shoot up his side, spreading from his rib cage to his lungs. The bullet connects with the kevlar of his vest, sending him backwards into the dirt with the force of it. Vomit rises in his throat as he sputters for breath, gasping, afraid he has swallowed his own tongue. 

Nacho hears the lieutenant fire again, then the sound of Lalo letting off his semi-automatic. There’s a sickly squelch, then silence. Dust swells in the air as Nacho stares up at the cloudless sky, trying to regain himself. Only the dust is so much redder now, thick and wet.

Nacho rolls over and looks out into the clearing beyond the car. Lalo has shot the lieutenant down, but not before a second bullet could sink into his own flesh.

Nacho freezes. 

The edges of his vision cloud. 

In the chaos, he has no clue where Lalo was hit, only that he goes down. The remaining Najarros fire sporadically, their aim poor, bullets littering the dirt. Nacho begins crawling to the tail-end of his car just as the windows get shot out. Glass scatters across the seats and the ground with a deafening shatter. Nacho ducks his head, clambers over on his stomach, and a shard finds its way into his palm. It lodges under his skin. He winces at the pain but keeps moving. 

When he lifts his head, he sees Lalo on his back, writhing with a strangled groan. He’s bleeding out, maybe from his stomach or his shoulder or his hip. The blood is too ubiquitous to give Nacho any indication of where it’s coming from. He certainly has no time to figure it out. 

Across from Lalo, Nacho sees the lieutenant, a bullet wound in his stomach, scrambling for the gun near his feet. He groans with the effort of it, screaming through his gritted teeth. Nacho stands. He lines up his gun against the car. He aims. He urges his finger towards the trigger.

He hesitates. 

For a moment, a naive moment, he considers how this could all be over so easily. One second of inaction and no more Lalo, no more Fring, no more cartel. It would look like a drug deal gone bad. He could go missing. He could get out of here. He could find his father. They could leave. It could all be over.

But then Nacho hears Lalo whimper.

He pulls the trigger.

The lieutenant goes down immediately, a spray of blood erupting from the hole where the bullet punctures his throat. Nacho shoots again when he sees movement to his left. The other lieutenant who had been hiding out behind the van crumples to the ground, bleeding from his chest. Nacho fires again for good measure, not bothering to wait and see where it hits. He sprints into the clearing, out of cover, and falls to his knees beside Lalo, more than ready to drag him out of there.

“Lalo,” he chokes out. “Where—where are you hit?”

“My shoulder,” Lalo says through bared teeth. “Fucking bastard got me in my shoulder. _Hijo de puta._ ”

Up close, Nacho can better see the wound. The skin is mangled and raw and shredded like ground meat. He lets out a shaky breath. Sweat drips off the end of his nose. He wipes his face with his forearm.

“Do you think you can stand?” Nacho asks. 

Lalo opens his mouth to speak, but he’s interrupted by the sound of tires squealing through the dirt as the only gunman left climbs into the van and floors it. At that, Lalo answers Nacho’s question by reaching for his gun and clumsily getting to his feet. His injured arm hangs limply at his side as he fires over and over until his magazine is empty. Anger twists his features. Blood drips off his fingertips. His gun clicks and clicks and clicks again. 

Nacho stands beside him, watching as the van disappears into the hills. His ears are ringing twice as loud now that the gunfire has ceased and the quiet can do nothing to conceal the sound inside his head. Finally tossing the gun to the ground, Lalo turns to Nacho. An ill-conceived grin is on his face. He looks like he might say something. Instead, his legs give out from underneath him.

Nacho braces Lalo against his chest as he steadily pulls him down behind the car, propping him up against the passenger side door. Nacho swears under his breath. His heart feels like a closed fist beating up against his ribcage, each pound harder than the last. There must be a bruise already blooming across his entire left side. 

“Are you hit anywhere else?” Nacho asks. 

Lalo looks at him. There’s blood smeared underneath his chin, a drip of it pilling on the end of his moustache. “Nah, man, just my shoulder.”

“Alright,” Nacho says. “We gotta get you out of here.”

“You think?” 

Lalo laughs.

*

Even with the desert far behind, Nacho can still smell the gunsmoke, can still hear the wet crunch of bullets tearing through flesh and bone. He takes the fastest route back into Albuquerque proper, speeding twenty, maybe thirty MPH above the speed limit.

Tires screeching, Nacho veers into the driveway of the modest Spanish bungalow Lalo has been staying at since he took over the business. The neighbourhood is unremarkable and unassuming, a suburban vacuum of freshly mowed lawns and picket fences compared to the carnage they just witnessed fifteen minutes east. It would make the aftermath unfolding in front of Nacho grossly anticlimactic if not for the presence of Lalo bleeding out in his passenger seat. 

Cutting the ignition as soon as the car brakes, Nacho grabs his gun from the glass scattered floor mat and tucks it behind his back. He gets out of the car. He figures this is the best place to hide out until they get the all-clear: not the restaurant—which Fring has eyes on—and certainly not his own place where he could be endangering Amber and Jo. 

This will have to do. 

When he pops open the passenger side door, he is once again met with the sight of Lalo, smirking, bloody, soaking through the seat. Nacho’s first thought concerns the upholstery job in store for his father if he decides against scrapping the car altogether. His second thought is much less comical; Lalo is losing a lot of blood _._

Nacho glances at the cavalcade of suburban houses across the street and hopes to God that every neighbour is firmly planted in front of their televisions with their microwave dinners. He coaxes Lalo out of the bullet shredded car and steadies him against his side, balancing out Lalo’s weight as they venture up the walkway. As he brushes up against Lalo, he feels a wetness, hot and slick, transfer to his neck. 

“Keys,” Nacho demands when they reach the front door. 

Lalo looks displeased about being bossed around, even in his condition, but he reaches into the pocket with his uninjured arm and tosses them to Nacho anyways. They jangle on the key ring as Nacho quickly unlocks the door, shoves it open, then helps Lalo inside. He lowers him onto the sofa in the living room. Lalo groans, looking woozier and fainter by the minute. His brow is wet with sweat, his skin losing its colour. Lalo takes his hand off his wound to survey the damage, but it’s hard to see much of anything beyond the sopping shreds of his shirt.

“Not a bad shot,” Lalo slurs and half-laughs, half-winces. He points a reddened finger gun at Nacho, pulls the imaginary trigger. “Unlucky for him, you were the better one.”

Nacho feels his stomach sink. He ignores the ill-timed compliment, moving through the house to check the doors, the windows, the locks. He closes the curtains in the living room, then removes his gun from his waistband, setting it down on the table by the front door. He takes off his bulletproof vest and immediately feels naked without the thing that stood between him and another wound in his stomach, between Lalo and a shallow grave in the desert. His abdomen sears where the bullet hit the kevlar, his palm stinging similarly where the shard of glass breached his skin. 

Nacho hurries to the kitchen, grabs the nearest towel he can find—which is a damp dishrag hanging on the oven handle—and hands it to Lalo. “Apply pressure.”

Lalo takes it from him. He holds it against his shoulder, gritting his teeth. The lines in his face deepen. “You know a guy for this?”

Nacho nods. “Yeah, I know a guy.”

He makes the call.

By the time Caldera arrives, the dish towel has soaked through. Lalo’s arm is drenched down to his wrist, his ear still dripping from his head wound. Nacho answers the door with clammy hands, out of breath, trying not to let panic overtake him. Caldera steps inside without needing to be told. 

“I thought I said I never wanted to see your face again,” Caldera says, then sighs. “Where is he?”

Nacho directs Caldera to the living room with some urgency. As they walk in, Lalo lifts his head from the back of the sofa and smiles, still holding the useless towel against his shoulder. “ _Hola_ , nice of you to come.”

Caldera looks back at Nacho uneasily, then gets to work. 

Nacho watches from the other side of the room as Caldera quickly assesses the damage. He prods at Lalo’s arm in several places to test if any nerves have been severed, bandages his head, then cuts him out of his ruined shirt to better examine his shoulder wound. Nacho has never seen Lalo so cooperative or mechanical. He only winces once Caldera begins cleaning his injuries with an alcohol solution. The tendons in his neck protrude, the ball of his jaw tightened. He bites back another groan as the torn flaps of skin are prodded open by the pressure of the gauze, blood leaking out in a threaded line down his bicep. 

Caldera clears his throat. “As far as I can tell, your shoulder bone is intact and the bullet missed your thoracoacromial artery. Lucky for you, the mass tissue damage and the blood loss is the worst of your problems, mostly on account of the sloppy entry and exit wounds. The bullet tore right through.” Caldera looks back at Nacho. “Was the weapon low calibre, close range?”

Nacho nods. “Yeah, it was.”

“Thought so.”

Lalo chuckles. “Wow, this guy really knows his stuff.” He looks at Caldera, head tilted with curiosity. “What hospital you work at, man?”

Caldera purses his lips. “Well, I—”

“ _No es un médico, es veterinario_ ,” Nacho interrupts.

Lalo raises his eyebrows. “This gringo is a vet?”

Nacho smirks, laughing quietly through his nose. Caldera grimaces and produces a single-use needle from his medical bag. He fills it with a translucent liquid from a small unlabelled bottle, then taps out the air bubbles. Caldera looks at Nacho as if asking for his permission. 

“Something for the pain,” Caldera explains.

Nacho nods. Lalo holds out his arm, Caldera finds his vein, and the needle disappears underneath his skin. Nacho watches intently as Lalo relaxes, the drug gradually oozing into his bloodstream. Lalo eases back against the sofa as Caldera busies himself with a needle and thread. Nacho keeps his distance but never takes his eyes off Lalo, even as Lalo seems to fade from reality, laughing at nothing, half-murmuring the lyrics of a song that seems vaguely familiar, something he has sung before at the restaurant or in the car. 

Distracted by the steady rhythm of Caldera stitching the mangled sections of skin back together, Nacho is startled when a cat suddenly jumps up onto the coffee table: a scraggly, skinny thing with a sizeable chunk of its left ear missing. It meows, low and croaky, and Caldera chuckles, easing up now that Lalo’s drugged and docile, nearing unconsciousness but still humming incomprehensibly. The wound looks under control now, the bleeding slowed.

“Salamanca is a cat person?” Caldera asks.

Nacho shrugs, watching as the animal licks its paw, its tabby striped tail curling around its white feet which are freckled with dirt. Lalo never said he had a pet. It looks more like a stray than anything.

“Guess I have something to put on the books now,” Caldera says. “Do you know her name?”

Caldera reaches over to pet her, but the cat jumps off the coffee table and bounds into the kitchen. Nacho stares Caldera down, pointing to the needle that now hangs stationary in his hand. 

“The sooner you finish up, the sooner you get paid, the sooner you can get out of here,” Nacho says.

Caldera frowns but takes the hint, putting in the final few stitches and bandaging up the wound with a thick layer of gauze, getting Nacho to help maneuver Lalo over on the sofa when needed. With some of the blood wiped away, Nacho can get a better look at Lalo’s injuries, and his chest. It’s already badly scarred. His eyes map out the white and faint score marks of childhood, as well as newer scars, pink and searing, that appear to be one or two years old at most. A simple crucifix, plain and gold, dangles around Lalo’s neck. 

Nacho averts his eyes.

“That should do it,” Caldera says, taking off his gloves and sanitizing his hands. “Now make sure his wound is kept clean and dry. Change the bandages every 4 to 6 hours, or when needed. I’ll leave you some painkillers as well as some antibiotics to use if you see any signs of infection. And make sure he finishes the whole bottle. Antibiotic resistance is some serious shit.”

Nacho scoffs. “Do I look like a fucking nurse to you?”

Caldera shoots him a look. “Then, by all means, take him to a hospital.” 

Nacho bites his tongue.

After packing up his supplies, Caldera sees himself out, the 5000 dollars Nacho just paid him gracelessly shoved inside his back pocket. “Don’t call me again,” Caldera says with a stern wag of his finger as he pauses on the doorstep, medical bag in hand. “And I mean it this time.”

Nacho closes the door without saying goodbye or thank you. It clicks shut, splitting the quiet for half a second before it descends upon the house again. Nacho deadbolts the door, slides the chain in place, then returns to the living room. 

As far as he can tell, Lalo is unconscious, his form unmoving on the blood-stained sofa. His breath is even-paced, his eyes closed. It’s strange—almost alarming—seeing Lalo like this, so lifeless and vulnerable, as vulnerable as a Salamanca can be. 

When Tuco started using again, Nacho experienced a similar sort of discordance. Some days Tuco would fail to show up for collection and Nacho would find him passed out on the floor of his condo, coming down from his latest crank high. In those moments, Nacho knew he technically held all the cards—one purposeful twist of his wrist and Tuco could be wearing a Columbian Neck-Tie between his ears—but he always had to move so carefully, until just being careful wasn’t careful enough. 

Now, Tuco is incapacitated in some state prison, being told when to eat, when to sleep, when to shit, kept far away from his drugs and his business. Nacho had wanted to go a step further, but the knock to the Salamanca image is almost a satisfying alternative. Likewise, seeing Hector unresponsive in that hospital bed, unable to speak or move on his own, was something Nacho was wholly unfamiliar with. At least until it became an inevitability. 

Nacho had been the catalyst who had taken down both Tuco and Hector, and he will be the catalyst who takes down the one who succeeds them.

Just not yet. 

In the pathless quiet, Nacho feels the dirt between his fingers again, hears the metallic clang of bullets ripping through the body of his Javelin. He sees Lalo bleeding out in the open. He could have waited a little bit longer for a better shot, one that would hit Lalo point-blank and tear through his skull, ending it all there.

He’s not sure why he chose differently. 

Lalo shifts in his sleep and Nacho resists the urge to hover over him, check his breath with a finger in front of his nose to confirm proof of his choice. Instead, he makes a few calls, one to Domingo, one to Blingy, then Carlos and the other distributors to inform them of what went down. His explanations are unemotional, vague. He only offers the minimal amount of information that will keep them safe and the operation running on the off-chance that the Najarro gang retaliates. Domingo sounds startled but focused on the other end of the line, telling Nacho to keep him updated before hanging up. 

Afterwards, Nacho goes to the bathroom to clean himself off, exhausted and spent. His reflection shocks him. His clothes are caked with blood and dust, the side of his neck completely covered where Lalo leaned against him to get in and out of the car. He can smell it now, rusty and earthy and pungent like the crusted lock on an old tool shed. 

Nacho finds a towel in the hallway closet then runs the shower. He strips down and gets in, bringing in his blood-soaked button-up to thoroughly rinse through. The hot water soothes his muscles and dilutes the adrenaline running thick inside his veins. He washes himself off, scrubbing away the desert, scrubbing away Lalo. The water at his feet turns a sickly brown as he rings out his shirt and the blood runs off his shoulders and his chest. He leans an elbow against the tiled wall, finding his breath, willing away the ache from his ribs, his palm, and the sound of spattering gunshots from his ears. 

Being surrounded by Lalo’s things, which are so human and mundane, is surreal. His razor sits on the edge of the tub along with half-empty bottles of shaving cream, aftershave, shampoo, conditioner, body wash. Nacho borrows some just to make sure all the blood is washed away, then turns off the shower and gets out. He briefly examines the mottled bruises on his abdomen, then redresses, leaving his button-up to dry on the side of the tub. 

The glass in his palm flares. He looks for tweezers in the medicine cabinet to dig it out but only finds mouthwash and an empty bottle of cholesterol pills. He spies the prescription label—which reads Eduardo Salamanca in minimalist script—and tries not to think of Hector. 

Lalo’s still sleeping when Nacho comes back to the living room. He watches the even rise and fall of his chest and feels reassured, returning the gun resting on the coffee table to the waistband of his jeans. The unnamed cat is sitting beside Lalo like a silent guardian. Her green eyes narrow at Nacho as he looks through the window into the street. The sky is still light, but the sun has dipped below the visible horizon. The street lights begin to turn on one by one. 

Nacho keeps watch.

*

Several hours later, the sky is completely dark, only periodically dotted by stars as the clouds pass and dissipate. Nacho can feel himself nodding off, ushered towards sleep by the steady cadence of Lalo’s breathing. 

But then his cell phone goes off. 

It rings and rings and rings, buzzing incessantly in his back pocket. Nacho expects it to be Domingo again, asking for clarification or providing an update on the situation. But when he flips open his cell phone, the words “UNKNOWN CALLER” flash across the screen in blocky white type. 

His stomach sinks. His throat tightens. His cell phone buzzes and continues to buzz. Glancing over his shoulder at a still sleeping Lalo, Nacho swallows down his apprehension and makes his way to the garden located off the kitchen, shutting the back door behind him as quietly as possible. 

“Hello?” He answers the phone with little more than a whisper, his anger quickly transforming it into a hiss.

“Varga.” The voice belongs to Fring. “Are you with him?”

Nacho grits his teeth, the joints in his jaw tensing so hard he thinks the tendons in his neck might snap. He looks back at the house. The windows are still blackened. 

“Yes,” Nacho says and turns his back to the door. He paces along the edge of the pool, his reflection murkily following behind him, back and forth, back and forth. “Was this—was this you? Did you set Lalo up?”

There’s silence on the other end of the line. Nacho feels like he might vomit. He thinks of his father playing poker with his friends, a gun unknowingly hovering behind his head. Blood and brains splatter onto the restaurant window as Nacho watches and does nothing. 

“Frankly, I am offended you would think this botched assassination attempt was my doing,” Fring says calmly. “No, I need Lalo Salamanca alive . . . for the time being. How is his condition?”

“He was shot, once, in the shoulder. Lost a lot of blood but he should be fine.” 

“Were there any witnesses?”

“One member of the Najarros got away. I told my guys to keep an eye out for him.” Nacho sits down in a lawn chair, stares out into the rippling pool water as a dry breeze passes over the garden, sifting through the ferns and the grass. “Is this about turf? Because you could have told me something was coming, that the Espinosas still had friends.” 

Fring audibly stiffens. “I was unaware of this movement against the Salamancas.”

“Well, there was no indication that the Najarros wanted anything other than a piece of the Salamanca business. As far as I know, their ties with the Espinosas were severed years ago.”

“You would be surprised, Señor Varga, to know what vendettas lie beneath the surface,” Fring says flatly. “See to it that Lalo Salamanca recovers. More instructions will be available to you in the coming days.”

Fring hangs up and Nacho makes sure to delete all evidence of the call from his cell. 

When he comes back inside, Lalo is awake. He’s standing in the kitchen, his slumped figure illuminated by the open refrigerator door. He seems out of it, probably from whatever concoction of drugs Caldera gave him. His eyes are half-lidded, the bandages wrapped around his shoulder fully visible with his chest bared. His grip is slack on a bottle of something alcoholic that hovers near his hip. Nacho moves carefully, his cell phone burning in his back pocket. 

“Who was that?” Lalo asks and his speech is heavy and mumbled like his tongue is swollen behind his teeth.

“Domingo,” Nacho lies with ease. He leans against the counter across from Lalo, crossing his arms in an attempt to appear nonchalant. “I wanted to make sure my guys were on the lookout for any moves the Najarros could make against us.” 

Lalo snorts. “Those _bastardos_ don’t have the balls to try anything else, not against the Salamancas.”

Nacho says nothing, put off by the sudden family resemblance between Lalo and Hector. Lalo shifts and takes a sip from the bottle in his hand. The light from the refrigerator catches his bandaged shoulder just long enough for Nacho to see that the wound has bled through. The red is outlined by the yellowish hue of some other bodily fluid. 

Nacho straightens, taking a step towards him, and he can smell mezcal, smokey and pungent, and the death-like stench of an open sore. “Can I take a look?” Nacho asks. 

It feels dangerous even being this close to Lalo, let alone asking to come closer. Nacho feels like a lion tamer, encircling some large incapacitated cat, just waiting for the moment when it wakes up and lunges for his throat. But Lalo nods, setting the bottle of mezcal on the counter and letting Nacho close the space between them. Nacho unravels the gauze from his shoulder, almost flinching with the rise of Lalo’s naked chest, like the slightest movement means violence. 

“My cousins told me the Espinosas gave it to you pretty good,” Lalo says with a misplaced laugh. “Left you stranded out in the desert, your guts in the sand.”

Nacho hates being reminded. He feels a residual sear in his abdomen where he was shot. His mouth dries, reminiscent of how his lips had cracked and bled from the hours of sun exposure. 

Once the used gauze is removed, Nacho goes into the living room to fetch the spare bandages Caldera left him. He flicks on the kitchen light to better see what he’s dealing with. He begins redressing Lalo’s wound the same way his father had his the night he sought refuge at his house. His father had been horrified by what Fring and his men had done to him, but Nacho isn’t horrified by Lalo’s injuries. It almost looks artful, the way the bullet tore his skin apart like a piece of wet tanned hide. Caldera did his best to close up the entry and exit wounds, but the stitches are slightly crooked and rushed.

A certain calm descends over Nacho as he works. His hands are clumsy but sure of what they need to do. Lalo shuts up and watches, his stare weighted and deliberate and unwavering. When Nacho’s done, he ties the loose ends of the bandage together and meets Lalo’s eyes. 

There’s a pause, precarious and undetermined, and then Lalo reaches for Nacho, pulling him closer. Nacho feels his pulse in his throat as Lalo slips his fingers underneath the strap of his undershirt. He stills, saying nothing, breath arresting in his chest. At first, he thinks Lalo’s going to venture further than that, move his hands over his chest to his nipples and his naval and even lower, but he stops there, touching the messily healed wound on his shoulder. Lalo sweeps his thumb back and forth over the uneven skin, then experimentally presses against it.

“Does it hurt?” Lalo asks, dumbstruck, like a child.

“No,” Nacho manages, then exhales shakily. “Not anymore.”

“My cousins said the vet had to leave a bullet in you,” Lalo says playfully. “Is that true?” 

Nacho nods and Lalo drags his other hand to the scar near Nacho’s hip, grazing the bruises on his ribs as he goes. He isn’t as gentle this time. His fingertips knead into Nacho’s side through the fabric of his shirt, like he’s searching for tangible evidence of his sacrifice.

“You took two bullets for my family,” Lalo says as he thumbs at the marred skin. His hands are warm, almost feverish, and his fingers are calloused and firm. Whatever Caldera gave him has made him sloppy, careless, and the mezcal he drank while Nacho was gone has likely amplified its effects. There’s a sheen of sweat on his brow; he looks pained by his wounds, but he smiles, lets out a chuckle. “Now that I've taken one for you, consider my debt repaid.” 

He lets go of Nacho, but Nacho doesn’t move away immediately. Maybe as a gesture of defiance, maybe because he wants to test the unfamiliar and noxious heat of him, see how much of it he can withstand. He eventually backs away, returning to the living room to position himself in the chair by the door, gun readied as Lalo passes out again on the sofa.

Nacho only notices the blood lingering on his fingertips much later into the night. It’s crusted beneath his nails and hardening against his fingerprints. Even when he tries to clean his hands of it, Salamanca blood seems to follow him around.

He glances at the bulletproof vest discarded on the floor and thinks about the armadillo again, scuttling through the dirt, Lalo nudging its armoured back with his foot. 

_Ayotochtli_ , turtle rabbit, not one or the other but two of something.

**Author's Note:**

> To be continued . . . 
> 
> Apologies for my horrible Spanish. Please feel free to correct me. 
> 
> Let me know what you thought!


End file.
